“People always ask, how do you write a song?,” notes Bryan. “‘Do the words come first or does the music come first?’ I said, ‘We should write a musical about how to write a song.’ ”

DiPietro adds that “we also were both interested in what was the follow-up period to ‘Memphis.’ We were both fascinated with this time when pop groups were manufactured, and essentially writers created these groups and wrote for them.

“And then of course the Beatles came, and suddenly there was this seismic shift in the business. We just thought it was a very rich milieu.”

Two of a kind

For all their similarities, and their close artistic collaboration, Bryan and DiPietro come off as two very distinct types.

DiPietro, whose additional credits include the record-setting, off-Broadway revue “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” is the more intense and cerebral.

“It’s rehearsal aerobics!,” the easygoing rocker says of the breathless pace and 12-hour days involved in rehearsals.

While DiPietro grew up steeped in theater, Bryan came to the field relatively late. He had been playing in bands since his early teens, joining up with Jon Bon Jovi around age 16. After years of nonstop touring and massive success, their band went on hiatus in 1990, and the keyboardist decided he wanted to learn the craft of songwriting.

After landing a publishing deal, he began composing songs but grew frustrated they weren’t going anywhere. Finally, Bryan told his publisher he wouldn’t write another until one of them sold first.

“And he said, ‘What about musicals?,’ ” Bryan recalls now. “I said, ‘What are they?’ ” (Up to then, Bryan’s exposure to musical theater began and ended with seeing “Fiddler on the Roof” around the time of his bar mitzvah.)

“He says, ‘I can get you 20 songs covered, eight times a week.’ I said, ‘I’m interested.’ ”

Eventually, a friend in the business connected him with DiPietro, who was looking for someone to compose for “Memphis.”

“I grew up on rock ’n’ roll,” DiPietro says. “I was a big theater fan as a kid, but when I was starting out, in the early ’90s, rock ’n’ roll was sort of not accepted in theater — the prevailing word among producers was that rock ’n’ roll does not work onstage. This was just prior to ‘Rent.’

“I was like, this is the music I grew up on. It’s the main music — it’s not going away, and it’s not a fad. So when we found each other, it was, oh, here’s a real rocker who actually wants to write for theater and knows how to write for theater.

“But he also knows rock ’n’ roll, and doesn’t theatricalize it to the point it loses its integrity.”

The two also found that they shared a particular desire to create original shows, rather than adapting existing material, which has become standard practice for new musicals.